As the nationalist parties of the New Right gain ever greater influence in Europe, the future of the European Union is looking increasingly precarious.

It is not right to say that Europe is leaderless—but there is much less confident leadership here than we have been used to, and the problems our senior politicians have inherited are proving hard to tackle. If this situation continues, the pre-eminent role Europe has played in world affairs for centuries will be seriously weakened, and the European Union itself might become an irrelevance.

The EU is accustomed to coping with challenges on various different fronts, especially from those who believe that its existence is an affront to sovereign democracy. Brussels has long been able to brush such criticisms aside. “Why can’t they see how necessary we are?,” is often the basic response. “Don’t they understand that clinging to the nation state in an age in which borders are becoming increasingly irrelevant is a response of the purblind?”

But now there has been an outcry from those who fear that the people who are clinging to the idea of the nation-state have been gaining the upper hand. The most urgent calls to action have been voiced by three politicians—Mario Draghi, Enrico Letta, and Romano Prodi—each of whom was once prime minister of Italy. Post-war Italian politics has often been dismissed as passionately disordered and fundamentally unserious, yet now Italy is the key site of the struggle over Europe and trends in that country have been pointing the way that others will be constrained to take. What we are witnessing is a struggle in which established politics is losing ground to a new way of thinking.

The frustrations expressed by the retired premiers at the workings—or non-workings—of the EU illustrate the predicament in which all the EU member states find themselves. All three Italian politicians believe deeply in the Union—more, perhaps, than the leaders of any other large state. They know that their country needs the EU’s backing to enable its economy to remain viable, dependent as it was and is on German industry, the export of luxury goods, and a helpful European Commission. They also hoped—and believed—that at some future time a European government would take control of Europe’s macroeconomy and defence, as well as assuming other governing powers still to be determined. They would have viewed this as a progressive development.

Now, instead, they can see that the Union is faltering. Worse, they must accept that the prime ministerial seat of their country is occupied by Giorgia Meloni: a woman of the Right, who was formerly a supporter of the post-fascist current in Italian politics, a woman who at 48 is relatively young, and who has set aside—but not dropped—her Eurosceptic views only because, to put it crudely, Italy needs the money.

Italy has been promised almost €200bn from the Next Generation EU fund to help address a public debt of over €300bn, and to help finance political and industrial reforms. Thus, Meloni is unlikely to leave the Euro or to stage an Italexit: but in contrast to her distinguished predecessors, she presents herself as a “Eurorealist”—a definition that suggests many things, one of which is a desire to reduce the power of the present EU.

In concert with other New Right parties, who are now increasing their representation at EU level, Meloni is promoting “Eurorealism,” as a way of remaining within the Union and taking whatever benefits it offers, while signalling that one is not a true believer. This stance is being adopted to differing extents almost everywhere. The New Right parties of the continent were enthused by—even envious of—Brexit: but, on reflection, none of them decided to follow Britain’s example. Instead, the general agreement is that the sensible course is to stay in the EU while opposing any move to integrate the countries further or to reduce the EU to a single market, and insisting on the right of sovereign governments to disagree on specific policy areas, such as aid to Ukraine. 

Meloni, like many of the other EU members, is reluctant to give the EU more powers, while nevertheless relying on EU help as she struggles with a budget that has been increasingly strained by Italy’s large health and welfare systems, especially given its ageing population. Her caution has stirred the former Italian premiers to protest—believing as they do in immediate and far-reaching change towards accelerated unification of Europe.

In 2023–24, Mario Draghi—President of the European Bank, unelected prime minister of Italy in 2021–22, and the most prominent and outspoken among the former premiers—authored a report that aims to address Europe’s lack of competitiveness. He underscores the necessity strong reforms in the energy sector and in industrial policy and urges the need to encourage innovation, stressing above all that “Europe must behave less like a confederation and more like a federation.”

One year later, few of the recommendations in his report have been implemented. In his frustration, Draghi has abandoned his usual public composure to make some passionate appeals. “Why can’t we [the EU] change?,” he told audiences in Spain and Italy. “How serious must a crisis become for our leaders to join forces and find the public will to act?”  He has urged the necessity of “a new, pragmatic federalism,” which would entail greater joint action and greater integration of defence, macroeconomic policy, and fiscal rules. Without that, he warns, Europe faces the danger—even the inevitability—of a slow collapse.

Meanwhile, Romano Prodi—President of the European Commission from 1999–2004 and a two-time Italian prime minister—has lamented the fact that the EU member states did not listen to him in 2004 when the organisation expanded to take in more members and he warned that this would require changes that would need to be debated first. He was told that any such debate would simply cause dissension and that there would be no hope of reaching a common accord. The two main pillars of the EU, France and Germany, did indeed call for profound reforms to the organisation, as he has noted, but never committed themselves to furthering those reforms.

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Prodi’s views form the preface to a book by Sylvie Goulard, a former French government minister and deputy head of the European Central Bank. The book is called Grande da Morire (roughly, “Big Enough to Die”) and its subtitle makes its purpose clear: in English, it reads, roughly, “How to Avoid the Implosion of Europe.” Goulard believes that the EU, under the leadership of Ursula Van Der Leyen, is now pursuing a policy that will allow the organisation to grant membership not only to Ukraine, but also to the former Soviet states of Georgia and Moldova, alongside others in Central Europe—and that this will precipitate an implosion big enough to destroy the Union. She writes that this is being undertaken “in a headlong rush, while Europe still has neither foreign policy, nor a unified defence, nor a budget worthy of the name… [but] when it comes to the EU, nothing can be ruled out,  especially at a time when nationalism is returning in force… This is no time to pretend that the Union can be strong without first ensuring it is unified.” 

Enrico Letta—who also authored a plan for the future of the EU in 2024, which makes many of the same points as Draghi—has been only a little more restrained. A year after his plan was published, he was asked how far his proposals had been taken on board. He replied that little has been done and that reform is now “even more urgent”—and insisted that the only way to secure a future for the EU is through greater unity.

The pronouncements of the three former Italian premiers are telling. They reveal the perennial hypocrisy of many of the leaders of the EU states, who verbally backed the kinds of reforms Draghi and Letta were demanding, lauding their reports as important road maps for Europe’s future—but did little or nothing of substance. As Prodi has pointed out, his former colleagues did “the minimum necessary, seeing the Council of Europe (on which all heads of government sit) not as a necessary and communal institution, but as the place in which they defend their national interests.”

These are not new insights—but the fact that an authoritative figure like Prodi is making these declarations suggests that the future of the Union now hangs in the balance. In a world as turbulent as this one, will it be able to ride out the coming storm? Will it be able to survive? At present, unification seems further off than ever. The European Union is only strong when its member states—or the majority of them, at least—are individually strong and are enthusiastic about its policies. Neither of these things are presently true, especially not the first.

France’s government has come the closest to imploding lately. Its parliament has been unable to agree on the composition of a new government, while President Emmanuel Macron who currently has by far the lowest approval rating since he’s been in office, has been unable to bring the administrative stalemate to an end.

Meanwhile, the UK prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, is increasingly unpopular with his own party, and a replacement is now being sought, none too discreetly. For a century, the Labour Party and the Conservative Party have been powerful rivals at the ballot box. Now neither party (especially the Conservatives) seems able to present a competent, let alone inspiring, image to the electorate.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany has been buffeted by both Right and Left. His heated denunciations of the New Right Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) have only resulted in an increase in that party’s popularity, while his mild remarks about the problems immigrants have caused have prompted accusations that he is pandering to the far Right, including from within his own party.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is beset by accusations of corruption among his closest associations, including his wife, who is to be tried for embezzlement. He has angered fellow leaders by refusing to increase Spain’s defence spending to five percent of GDP, in compliance with a supposedly binding requirement of all NATO members, from which Spain has secured an exemption.

The traditional pillars of Europe—including its mainstays, France and Germany—are presently trembling. Italy has been uniquely politically successful among the larger states—an unusual position for a country in which political turbulence had been seen as inevitable ever since the end of World War II. An article in September’s Daily Telegraph praises Meloni for “recovering Italy’s credibility on the world stage,” a remark the premier herself has quoted with obvious delight. She seems to have set her post-fascist roots aside in favour of a national conservatism in policy and a spirited personal presence and passionate rhetorical style, both of which command majority support.

Poland is by far the largest and most economically successful of the former communist states—and the country which, in sharp contrast to Spain, is leading the charge against Russia. It is spending more than five percent of its GDP to build the largest army in Europe convinced, as Prime Minister Donald Tusk said last month, that Russia will attack and that Europe—and especially the UK—is “already late in being properly prepared.” Yet neither Italy nor Poland can aspire to be the leader of the Union in the way that France and Germany have been. In that sense, the EU is lacking a political and bureaucratic anchor.

At the same time, the New Right parties continue to expand and grow and for the most part, they have been reluctant to offer full-throated—or, in some cases, any—support for Ukraine. The Czech Republic’s recent election returned the country’s former prime minister (and richest man), Andrej Babis, to power. Babis is sceptical about both Europe and about aiding Ukraine and has already given notice that he will cut the Czech Republic’s support. Neither Hungary’s Viktor Orban nor Slovakia’s Robert Fico have expressed any enthusiasm for continuing to support Ukraine, as they believe that Russia will prevail.

The AfD is a little ahead of the governing Right–Left coalition in Germany (it was eight points behind in the German federal election in February) and a large part of its membership, especially in former East Germany, is solidly pro-Russian. The Spanish New Right Vox party had already formed a coalition with the centre-right Partido Popular (PP) in many regions, but the two parties’ ability to form a governing coalition is now in doubt, following a dispute over unaccompanied minor migrants. But it’s likely that Vox, which has grown dramatically over the past few months, will nevertheless join a government formed by the PP, which is now ahead in the polls, if they secure a majority in the forthcoming elections, which must be held on or before September 2026. In the UK, the New Right Reform Party, founded a mere seven years ago and led by a populist politician named Nigel Farage, who is charismatic but has no experience in government, is over ten points ahead of both Labour and the Conservatives.  

The New Right parties differ in many ways, but their growth is set to continue, especially if Marine Le Pen—or, if she remains barred from standing, her fellow leader of the Rassemblement National Jordan Bardella—wins the French presidential election in a year and a half’s time. Then the whole political complexion of the European Union will be severely shaken. After more than 75 years of liberal rule, it will shift markedly to the right, and the informal but crucial Franco-German leadership of the EU will be doomed.

In a densely argued and revelatory book titled The Great Realignment, to be published in January 2026, the British historian Stephen Davies argues that the New or hard Right has been widely misunderstood and reviled, while its supporters are often regarded as a sink of deluded racists. No supporter of the New Right himself, he argues that its parties—including, crucially, Donald Trump’s Republican Party—are now ushering in a realignment in which identity and nationalism will play a larger part than economics. If they attain greater influence in the EU, which seems likely, they will insist on sovereignty for elected parliaments. These parties can point to a continuing lack of popular support for the European parliament—in part because most Europeans identify with their nations and because the European Commission is protective of its own, far greater authority.

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The question facing the older Right and Left is how to keep these upstart groups from power. They’ve tried labelling them “racist,” as Keir Starmer recently did with the policies of Nigel Farage. Or they could ban the New Right leaders from standing for office, as the French courts did to Marine Le Pen. But as Davies writes, “you can ban a party that has fringe status, but banning one that has the support of 20 per cent or more is a recipe for political unrest, or even revolution. Even more fundamentally, the established system is not going to survive anyway, regardless of what the new right politics does or how the establishment responds.” He may well be right: Le Pen’s Rassemblement Nationale presently polls at 34 percent, ten points ahead of the leftist New Popular Front and twenty points ahead of President Macron’s Ensemble.  

This is certainly a time of political turbulence—but for Davies, not one of chaos, either now or in the near future. “The question,” he writes, “is not so much whether the rules will successfully contain the new right insurgency, as whether that insurgency will be what drives a replacement system of government.” It is too early to tell.

But if present trends continue, it is not unlikely that a centre-right/New Right party will win the Spanish general election in 2026; that a grouping of this kind will remain in government in Sweden; that Giorgia Meloni will win another Italian election in 2027; that either Marine Le Pen or Jordan Bardella of the Rassemblement Nationale will be the next president of France in 2027; that the right-wing and Catholic-oriented Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice, PiS) could win in Poland in 2027, in an already mooted coalition with the New Right Konfederacja; that the AfD, which is currently edging ahead of the ruling CDU/CSU coalition in the polls, could win in Germany in 2029; that Nigel Farage’s Reform will win the next British general election in 2029.

If some or all of these revolutionary results come about, European politics will enter another world, with the entire political complexion of the European Union shifting markedly to the right. And since the ascendant parties are strongly sovereigntist, the Union will struggle even more than it does now to retain a purpose and form the basis of a future United Europe.